ESPN's Tragedy Porn NFL Draft Special Is Completely Out Of Hand

ESPN is on Day 2 of airing the Tragedy Porn Olympics and boy oh boy are they going deep in their bag tonight. No less than 15 minutes ago they had Offset - not even a prospect in this year's draft - give a chat about cancer. Roger Goodell thanked him for the hard work he's been doing in that field. Dr. Offset is so close to a cure we can almost taste it. But that was perhaps the lightest moment of the night thus far. Actually, no, that was the displaced Katrina victim Grant Delpit. I remember a time when a Katrina victim would have been the big ticket tragedy item of the evening. Not this year! We had a lightning strike, a gravel slip, blood clots, rare black diamond bone marrow diseases.

I've genuinely never seen anything like this. I fucking love the draft. I'm one of those people who gets way too excited to hear names of other humans read with assignments to move to a new city. "That's a great pick," I'll say out loud, alone, to no one in particular. The point I'm making is this is an event I watch every year. All of it. And I never remember it being like this. Of course a decent amount of elite athletes have gone through some shit. The rags-to-riches storyline is as ingrained to pro sports as the rule books. Some players' ability to persevere through tough times gives them an extra edge when they step out on that field and can be enough to get them to the highest level. I know that, you know that, WE ALL FUCKING KNOW THAT. I don't think we need to hear a Sunday morning Sportscenter feature on every single player during the best moment of their lives. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you enjoy hearing about every player's dead parent and the precise way in which they left this Earth. But I'd love to hear what school they went to and their position first if that's ok.